


All Gone

by crooklyn



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 02:05:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4858994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crooklyn/pseuds/crooklyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's happened to Ellie five times in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Gone

**I.**

"Shit.  _Shit_." The dumpster doesn't want to move, not even when Ellie heaves all her strength into it. Her arms are like pillars, but all isn't enough sometimes, and this is one of those fucking sometimes. She shoves away from it and looks up, her pony tail clinging to the back of her neck because of the sweat gathering between her shoulders. It's the middle of March. 

She can only waste a second or two to assess the distance from the dumpster to the ladder that will lead to safety. If it's not worth the jump, then she books it. If it is, then  _get the fuck up there right now_. Dogs growl menacingly a few blocks away, and the men who own them, run with them, don't sound much friendlier. The sky is the darkest tone of grey, darkening further as afternoon turns to evening.

She scrambles up, whispering "ah," when her knees touch the cold steel, and when she stands it's the way a hero would stand on the cover of a movie or a book. Being on a dumpster...that's a minor detail. 

Someone shouts, not too far away, "Go that way. Take Macho with you." Ellie tenses and crouches, shifting balance between the balls of her feet and her toes, clenching her fists, her teeth, even her fucking ass. "Okay. Jump. Jump, Ellie. One...two...--" 

"What the fuck are you  _doing_?" A whisper, as harsh as the darkness and the cold steel, disrupts her concentration. Tino and his friend, Mila, are a few feet away, their bodies already slinking through a break in the fence Ellie didn't see. She hops down from the dumpster and swiftly follows suit. The three of them run through an alleyway, bitter wind and trash at their heels, dashing across a street. Tino says "I know where we are," which means he knows a safe spot. 

Climbing, and running, and jumping, and they're in the top floor of a five story apartment building. Ellie is against a wall, hugging her knees to her chest, trying to breathe. 

"Where's Jess?" She asks abruptly.

Tino looks up from assessing Mila's bruised arm, and says irritably, "Why the fuck do you care?"

"Because," Ellie wipes a hand across her mouth. "She has my back pack."

"We don't know where she is," Mila answers quietly. "The last I saw her, she was with you." 

 _Thanks_ , Ellie wants to say.  _Thanks for your input. I'll add it to the growing list of things you say that are helpful to me. Classics like, "you should wear a jacket when it's cold outside," or "I think you're just really sad that Riley left."_

Ellie stands up and begins pacing. "We gotta look for them. Something isn't right." 

Tino tugs down Mila's sleeve. "Are you nuts? We're dead if we get caught."

"So are they," Ellie glares at him. "They're your friends."

Tino mumbles, looking away, "We ain't safe in the _military school_ , let alone out here."

Ellie looks out the window that leads to the fire escape. Sheets of rain blur the sky. She clenches her fists. "I'm going out to look for them. Stay here or head back. I don't care." She pulls her hoodie up and lifts the window open, slinking out into the night. 

"Wait," she hears. Tino emerges and helps Mila over. He struts and passes Ellie on the stairs. "They're my fucking friends. Why you wanna risk your life to look for 'em, I don't know."

"I told you," Ellie follows him downward, to the wet pavement. "She has my back pack." 

They are just running up to an intersection when a patrol truck hums by. Ellie and Tino press against the wall, but when Mila runs past them, Tino reaches out a hand and yanks her back. None of them mutter a word, the truck going its leisurely pace. 

"We're close," He whispers once it's gone. "The warehouse is three or four blocks--" 

"Look over there," Mila points across the street. 

Two figures are crouched low to the ground, hidden partially in the shadows of an alleyway. One has very broad shoulders--must be Michael. Wordlessly, the three vigilantes break into a sprint. Ellie's sneakers are soaked through by the time they get to the other side. 

"Mike, Jess," Tino calls. 

"We're here," a feminine voice responds. Ellie's body fills with relief when she recognizes it's Jess. The two groups meet up, friends exchanging are you okays and comments about what a shit idea this was. Ellie stands on the outside of it all, eyeing one thing: her backpack, currently slung over Jess's shoulders.

"Hey, don't mean to interrupt," she points to it. "But can I have that back?"

"Go ahead, it's heavy as shit." Jess hands it to her. "What do you have in there, anyway?"

"Heavy shit," Ellie mumbles to herself.  

The five of them manage to skirt the patrol routes and avoid any citizens on the return route. Ellie's not sure if the people they "ran into" earlier are still on the hunt, but she isn't going to stick around to find out. "All this to steal a fucking puppy," Tino murmurs. If she's agreed with him on anything, it's that. The idea seems so stupid now. Keeping a dog on one floor would never work, anyway. 

The trouble comes when they're almost at the school. 

Out of no where, a dog starts barking madly. The group does a collective turn, and at the end of the alleyway stand three men with what looks like a pit bull on a leash. "Run!" Tino yells. Ellie breaks into a sprint, the backpack jarring against her shoulders because Jess readjusted the straps. 

A few yards and they split up. Ellie follows Michael one way, Jess, Mila and Tino go the other. 

Michael is strong, but Ellie is fast, so they run at an even pace. Sometimes the barks sound distant, sometimes it's like it's right on their heels. 

Wordlessly, Michael turns down an alley way. Ellie nearly flies past it, but she sees the escape route, so she makes a last ditch effort to follow him, almost careening into the brick wall.  

All of a sudden she feels the fabric lifted off the skin of her neck and she's yanked backwards like a rag doll. "You think you can steal from us, bitch?" A hard chest moves against her, a gravelly voice casts harsh breath across her cheek. "I don't fuckin' think so. I'm settin' the dogs on you, bitch. I'm--"  

"Get-- _off_!" She bends over and bites his forearm, switching out her knife and jabbing in into his thigh. He cries out angrily and stumbles away, and she takes the opportunity to kick him in the stomach as hard as she can. He falls to the ground. 

She doesn't waste time, sprinting for the pile of creates that allow her to climb over a chain link fence, and hit the ground running on the other side. Somehow she meets up with the four of them again, and none of them think of slowing down.

The barks come back, and this time the men ambush them, using their greater knowledge of the Boston streets. One attacks from the side, and the other shows up in front of the party, emerging from a stairwell. They're forced into an abandoned building. "Window," Tino shouts. They all crowd towards it, Ellie at the back, casting troubled glances at the door. 

Michael is the tallest, so he jumps up and grabs the stool of the basement window barely big enough for him, lifting up the sill with his other arm. He crawls through, and then helps Jess up, who helps Mila, who helps Tino. Tino's hand is just reaching down when one of the men crashes through the door. 

"Hurry the fuck  _up_ , dude!" Ellie shouts. Tino's arm is frozen, so are his pupils, only fixated on what's going on behind her. She sees the apology there when he looks down at her, and her heart sinks. They're going to fucking leave--

"I'm sorry." He disappears. They all do.

This all happens in less than a second.

Ellie spews out a swear and darts to the side right when a man rounds a desk to grab at her. She's sees the hole in the wall from the corner of her vision, and she nearly dives through it, kicking her legs wildly until she is safe on the other side. She hightails it the fuck away, never looking back, only looking forward.

She gets back to the school an hour later. When Ellie sneaks into her bedroom after ten minutes of waiting for the school patrol to pass, her chest swells with so much anger and hurt that she thinks it might physically distend. Tino and Jess apologize, Mila and Michael don't. 

She learns two things that day: those are  _Riley's_  friends, and she has never felt more alone. 

 

**II.**

"She was blonde. She was  _blonde_." 

"Yeah, weird." 

"I know right? What the fuck."

"Okay. It's not  _that_  weird."

Riley and her are on the rooftop, and the afternoon is fading and spilling itself onto the surrounding buildings. They hug their jackets to their bodies. The chill is worth this view, and for Ellie, it's worth the silence. 

"What, you feel different about her now, or something?" Riley jokes. 

"I don't know." Ellie answers honestly. "I'm not sure. I know I love her. But...I don't know her." 

"Sure you do," Riley says. "You know she was blonde. You know that she loved you. You've got something there, Ellie. What more do you need." 

There are a million and one ways to answer that question.

Ellie's brain sweeps her back a long time ago. She's waddling in the middle of a bunch of small, clumsy kids. Someone calls, "nap time" and the voice is loud and familiar because she hears it every day. The same strong tone, the same deepness, despite it belonging to a woman. She hears it each morning when she wakes up, right before she closes her eyes at night. A care giver, a teacher. Sometimes, a warm pair of arms to hold her when she gets upset.

She's six, and she knows she doesn't have a mother. It's normal, and it's okay. Mrs. Wimmet's told her this a thousand and one times. 

Now she's in her room, holding a piece of crumpled paper in a shaking hand against a shaky chest. Marlene gave her the letter and the switchblade, and her mother's name was  _Anna_ , and it makes perfect sense. It makes so much sense that she holds the letter to her heart and cries for a third time. The kind of love she sees in her mother's words was just not supposed to be part of her destiny. And she knows the sense of abandonment is ludicrous, because Anna didn't want to leave her, but that doesn't make a difference, does it.

Riley doesn't understand. She's strong.

What Ellie really wants to say in response to her question is: "I need her here, with me. I need a fucking lot more."

Instead she says, "I don't know." 

Riley's going through her own shit, so she doesn't know how to respond. Ellie just closes her eyes and rests her head on her knees, starting to count. When she reaches ten, she will stop thinking such shitty, impulsive thoughts about her mom.  

Ten.

 

**III.**

"Hello?" 

Silence. 

Her Converse thud against the tiled floor. It's April, Riley's been gone for three weeks, and she's decided a rendezvous at the mall is the perfect cure for the knot of anxiety in her stomach. 

It'd be nice if someone was here, though.

"Winston?" She calls. His tent is some feet away and she can't tell if his horse, Princess, is there or not. A few more steps and she sees that no, she's not. 

Fair enough. Normal. Ellie decides to sit on a bench near the tent and wait. She rests her head on her palm, jiggling her opposite knee. Winston could be on a run for supplies at the military HQ, or maybe taking a long, slow patrol through the mall. He likes doing that. Ellie and Riley have done it with him a couple times.

The mall has very limited lighting, basically restricted to Winston's living area. If it were day time the sunlight would be streaming through enormous skylights on the ceiling, but it's night, and all there is above is darkness. Ellie changes her position on the bench from upright to lying down, closing her eyes. She's probably got four or five hours, plenty of time. 

The next time she opens her eyes she sees a man towering above her, shaking her awake by the shoulder. She sits upright and presses herself against the back of the bench, quickly feeling for the knife in her pocket. 

"Relax, I'm not gonna hurt you." The guy says. He's in his mid to late twenties, dark, olive skin. "Who the fuck are you, then?" Ellie asks. 

"I'm just here to get some stuff from my uncle. You knew him, right? You're Ellie?" 

Two things in that sentence perplex Ellie enough to give her pause, but she addresses one for now. "How do you know my name?"  

"Winston, when he came to the HQ for supplies, mentioned you sometimes. Wanted to see if we had any books for him to give to you."

"You're military." Ellie realizes. 

"Yeah. But I'm not, you know...I don't care that you're here. I know how it is." 

For now, a truce is reached between them. Ellie relaxes her tense body the slightest bit, still wary of him, but cordial for now. He shows the slightest change, though, so will she. 

"I didn't know Winston had family." 

"We weren't that close." The guy looks like he wants to mention something, but offers a hand instead. "My name is Bobby." 

She shakes it. "Ellie. But you knew that, I guess." 

"Yep." He looks around. Ellie notices distractedly that having a person with you in here makes the mall that much quieter, for whatever bizarre reason. "You come here to get some of his stuff, too?" 

Her brow knits. "Um, I...no. No, I was waiting for him to get back, actually." 

The guy says, "oh," but it's more of a small intake of breath. He looks...almost...embarrassed? Ellie watches with suspicion. 

"Well, I hate to say he passed away a week ago. Maybe it was more like five days. I, um, found him here." 

Ellie's mouth drops, so does her stomach. "Oh." Her arms wind slowly around her chest, and that's where they remain for a good five minutes as Bobby explains to her the details. It was a heart attack. A search party was sent out when he failed to show up to the QZ for a designated check in. His body was found slung across Princess. Ellie nods along, unsure of what to say.

"That's...too bad." Is what she goes with. _Stupid._  

"Do you want to look through anything? I'm only taking the documents and papers. Was actually gonna see if he has a picture of my mom." 

Ellie looks at the floor. That's the last thing she wants, to be inside that tent. "I should go back. But thank you. It was nice meeting you."

Bobby looks at her like she's the most vulnerable little thing in the world, and it grates at her tiredness. "You too, hon," He says as she turns and jogs away. It's so different, she thinks, than all the other times she's left Winston's place. For one, Riley was usually with her, and two, it was hard to leave a place feeling like shit when she got to ride a horse.

Numb, she makes it out of the mall.

Boston is so quiet at night. This wasn't the case before, apparently. Ellie tries to imagine what it would be like: cars cruising down the streets, working stop lights, people milling around past curfew. Must've been nice, and chaotic, and alive, as opposed to this dull life. Dull, but as the same time, sharp as knives. 

Ellie realizes she's walked at least half way home without her flash light on. She also realizes her body knows the lay of this place like the back of her hand. Every obstacle she climbs over or under, she's done so a thousand times. Every wall she presses against, her body's left a permanent indent. 

So she thinks,  _fuck it_ , and continues head on into darkness. 

 

**IV.**

Marlene always rests on the balance between distant and motherly, cold and embracing. For Ellie, at least. She's a woman who's different things for different people.   

To the Fireflies, she's a rebel leader. The human embodiment of their movement, their morals: remove every obstacle in the way of the cure, take no shit, or prisoners. People are shits and should be treated as such, but remember, we're doing this for them. The ultimate goal is unity.

To the military people, she's a thorn in their side, a heavy annoyance. But she's got enough followers to be considered a threat, and they in no way think it's unity she's striving for. She just wants chaos, she wants to rile people up for the sake of it. 

Ellie thinks both of them are right. 

Less than an hour after meeting her, Ellie realizes that for Tess, it's the same way. She's a woman with many facets, and she only shows one of them at a time. But for the people she really cares about, i.e Joel, it's all on display. 

To unassuming strangers and business folks and infected, she's a savage. She has her own rules by which she abides, and in some ways, they're similar to the Firefly Queen's: anything between her and _it_ is already gone. The rules are there are no rules. Toss aside anyone who slows you down, and make do with the sons of bitches you got. 

To those on the inside of her circle (and Ellie assumes Joel is probably the only one), she's a broken hustler who's faith in the world has died out, but something wakes her up every morning, and fuels that infamous rage. Something like hope, but maybe's it's not quite that. From the little time Ellie's gotten to know her, it's almost like she's  _waiting_ for something. For a means to an end. Or maybe just an end.  _  
_

So when Ellie first meets Tess she can't help but compare her to the only female figure in her life, who soon becomes the other, because Tess has that same polarizing quality she's come to associate with maternity: an edginess, but a softness, too. It's something she admires, and even though she's fourteen, strives for.

When Tess reveals the bite on her neck, disappointment and sadness flood Ellie, which very much takes her by surprise. It's not how she felt when she lost Riley, but it's still fucking sad. It's a feeling of hindsight: Tess would've been a close friend, and now she's gone, too. 

Maybe, Ellie thinks quietly, it's for the better. But no. That's not true. 

However, she sees how deeply it rattles the stranger next to her. The shells of his eyes are tough, but behind them is infinite sadness. That's how it goes; everybody's got it. 

Tess tells Joel to  _go_ and Joel says come on, and Ellie finds herself alone with an angry man she hardly knows for the second time, who seems just as reluctant to take her as before, and Ellie wonders how much she's going to be talking to herself on this journey.

As it turns out, a lot. But it works out in the end.

 

**V.**

The sky rains sheets of water. The clouds are dense, almost black, settling for the darkest grey.

She manages to stumble her way back into the QZ, drenched in sweat and rain. 

Ellie explains the story to Marlene when she gets to the Fireflies, and she cries like a little bitch when Marlene points a gun at her. It does not go how she rehearsed it in her head.

_"We...fuck, we snuck out to the mall like we used to...and we were so fucking stupid...we got careless and there was infected there, she--we both got bit. She turned. I haven't yet. I swear. I don't know what to do, Marlene. Fuck."_

 She sees Marlene's attempt at keeping it neutral, stoic, but it doesn't fool her one bit. Ellie is a master of perception, and what she says bewilders Marlene as much as it scares her. Marlene demands to see her arm, and Ellie shows it, shaking like a leaf. She's soaked through to the bone, hasn't eaten in two days, and her face must look like the Scream painting. 

It's an hour before Marlene lets her eat and rest. She says she'll tell everyone while Ellie's asleep, and she doesn't have to answer any more questions. "This changes everything," she says. She looks at Ellie completely anew, pride and hope rolling across her face like thunder. 

Ellie feels like she's being sucked into a game she doesn't want to play. All she wants to do is to shut off her brain because Riley isn't with her anymore. Riley's face and her laugh are now just a memory. It's so fucking pathetic, but she swears she can still feel the prints of her lips on her own.

She prefers not to think about the last two days, and with time, maybe she'll forget. Already the entire experience doesn't feel real, and illusion is on her side. Maybe it happened differently. Maybe it didn't happen at all. 

Marlene closes the door of Ellie's quarters after pressing her palm to her cheek. It's the only time she's done anything remotely of that sort, and it isn't comforting. It's a reminder of the difference between then and now. Ellie was at the Military school, Marlene was far away. Ellie laid in her dorm at night, and Riley was out there somewhere, possibly dead, but maybe  _alive_. No chance now.

They offered her clothes, but she still hasn't put them on. She wants to lay in her own sweat and grime, and she wants to rust like a metal door or window.

Ellie turns over in the cold bed and feels something poke her hip. She reaches into her dirty pants pocket and pulls out Riley's Firefly pendent. She puts it on. Tomorrow, she'll stow it away in her bag, forget about it until the next time she feels the urge to put it around her neck. She doesn't want anyone else to see it but her because it means that part of Riley is completely hers. 

Something else that's completely hers? This fucking lack of turning into an infected and ripping people's throats out. 

Ellie gazes through the window, sees patches of dark on the moon. One hand clutches the pendent, the other rests folded above her head, tightened into a fist.  _We fight for every second we get to spend with each other. Whether it's two minutes...or two days...we don't give that up. I don't want to give that up._

Ellie thinks,  _Neither do I._

**Author's Note:**

> The five times Ellie's been left behind.
> 
> Inspired by two songs on the TLOU/DLC soundtracks: All Gone and Left Behind. Live long and prosper!


End file.
